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15418 results in Military history

Page 315 of 771

  • Introduction to Part II

  • from Part II - Diplomacy and alliances
  • Edited by Richard Bosworth, Jesus College, Oxford, Joseph Maiolo, King's College London
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the Second World War
    Published online:
    05 June 2015
    Print publication:
    23 April 2015, pp 211-216

  • Summary

    The liberal international order established at the Paris Peace Conference was overthrown between 1933 and 1939. This opened the way for Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy to launch wars of conquest aimed at creating empires in Europe and the Mediterranean. This chapter considers whether the outbreak of war in September 1939 should be understood as a failure of European diplomacy. Peace is considered to be the ultimate aim of all diplomatic practice, even in wartime. One of the most important legacies of the First World War was the introduction of new international norms and new standards of international legitimacy. During the 1930s, professional diplomats in Britain and France failed to provide clear and effective policy guidance to their respective governments. The foreign policies of both states were slow to adapt to the changed international circumstances of the 1930s.

  • 15 - Sexuality and sexual violence

  • from Part III - The Moral Economy of War and Peace
  • Edited by Michael Geyer, University of Chicago, Adam Tooze, Yale University, Connecticut
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the Second World War
    Published online:
    05 June 2015
    Print publication:
    23 April 2015, pp 422-446

  • Summary

    The Second World War was profoundly environmental as conflict transformed environments and human relationships with them. This chapter outlines various aspects of the war's environmental history through a focus on the relationship between militarized states, societies and environments during the period of totalizing warfare. Although research into war's environmental history has laid bare the complex environmental dimensions of warfare, few attempts have been made to consider the relationship between the Second World War's environmental history and totalizing war. The chapter argues that paying attention to the environment creates a fuller understanding of totalizing war between 1939 and 1945. Totalizing warfare led to the increased exploitation of natural resources, shifts in human-animal relations, and the militarization of vast swathes of national territories. Financial, labour and other constraints limited the total mobilization of the environment. Wartime nature protection efforts further limited the war's environmental repercussions, even if their overall impact was small.

  • 6 - International organizations

  • from Part I - Ideologies
  • Edited by Richard Bosworth, Jesus College, Oxford, Joseph Maiolo, King's College London
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the Second World War
    Published online:
    05 June 2015
    Print publication:
    23 April 2015, pp 139-161

  • Summary

    The Nazi regime's genocidal policies evolved as a result of the dynamic interaction between racial ideals, societal interests, systemic paroxysms and structured violence. The importance of Second World War for Third Reich's extreme destructiveness can hardly be overestimated mass violence occurred predominantly between 1941-1945 in regions earmarked as future German 'living space'. The systematic killing of civilians under the Nazi regime involved decisions oriented toward military conquest and a radical restratification of German society. In the ongoing attempt to explain the Holocaust, scholars have long stressed the importance of the Nazi leadership's persistent commitment to bring about a 'Final Solution of the Jewish question', based on their racial hatred and a societal tradition of anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism and material interests made some Axis regimes more amenable to German pressure, as in the case of Slovakia: in March 1942, its government was the first to agree to the deportation of the country's Jews.

  • 5 - The human fuel

  • from Part I - Political Economy
  • Edited by Michael Geyer, University of Chicago, Adam Tooze, Yale University, Connecticut
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the Second World War
    Published online:
    05 June 2015
    Print publication:
    23 April 2015, pp 149-173

  • Summary

    Food has always been a weapon of war. The Second World War was no exception. Indeed, the impact of the conflict on food supplies was as deadly in its effect on the world population as military action. In order to withstand the strains of the Second World War a nation ideally required a large and well-equipped army which could be fed with a steady stream of food, medicines and arms. It therefore needed a strong industrial base which could produce these supplies and a logistical apparatus to deliver them to the front. A flexible capitalized agricultural sector which could adapt to wartime difficulties and still produce increased quantities of nutritious food was an enormous advantage. Food, particularly American food, has been especially crucial in the present war, because it has been essential to the fighting efficiency of our allies as well as our own military forces.

  • 5 - Reporting from the battlefield

  • from Part I - Ideologies
  • Edited by Richard Bosworth, Jesus College, Oxford, Joseph Maiolo, King's College London
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the Second World War
    Published online:
    05 June 2015
    Print publication:
    23 April 2015, pp 117-138

  • Summary

    In September 1939, the nationalism which characterized politics in the 1930s gave way to the internationalism of war. The project of international organization was primarily, but not exclusively, the concern of Grand Alliance: Britain, the USA and the USSR. Among the Axis powers, only Germany showed any interest in building institutions that would promote fascism internationally. This chapter shows how many of ideas, practices and people who designed and populated the United Nations Organization and its related agencies borrowed heavily from League of Nations. It underscores the significance and deep engagement of the United States with the project of international organization. Alexander Loveday spent twenty-six years in the service of the 'League of Nations'. The most important' reason for dedicating the best part of his working life to organization, he claimed, was 'belief in the value of the work that has to be done'.

  • 1 - The Axis

  • from Part I - Ideologies
  • Edited by Richard Bosworth, Jesus College, Oxford, Joseph Maiolo, King's College London
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the Second World War
    Published online:
    05 June 2015
    Print publication:
    23 April 2015, pp 21-42

  • Summary

    This chapter discusses the wartime ideology of the Western Allies, chiefly Britain and the United States, but also France. It considers ideology through prism of war aims. The first part examines the war aims of Britain and France from outbreak of European war in September 1939 to Germany's military victories in West in 1940. The Phoney War had witnessed a rising tide of anti-communist sentiment in France and Britain, egged on by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Moscow's diplomatic and economic aid to the Germans, and the Red Army's unprovoked attack on Finland. The second and longer part considers the war aims of Britain and the United States from 1940-1945. The Churchill's challenge is apparent from history of Atlantic Charter, the single most important statement of Allied war aims. The charter was less a declaration of war aims than it was a spur for the Allies to define and impose their own views regarding the stakes of the conflict.

  • 16 - Collaboration, resistance and liberation in Western Europe

  • from Part III - Occupation, Collaboration, Resistance and Liberation
  • Edited by Richard Bosworth, Jesus College, Oxford, Joseph Maiolo, King's College London
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the Second World War
    Published online:
    05 June 2015
    Print publication:
    23 April 2015, pp 412-435

  • Summary

    This chapter explores the politics and policies of occupation by Fascist Italy during the Second World War. It illustrates the discrepancy between Fascism's ambitions and the reality of the occupation. The chapter also focuses on the Fascist authorities' grudging acceptance of the status of junior partner in the axis and their attempts to pursue independent policies in the 'conquered' territories, despite the interference of the Nazis. The most plausible reason for the lack of interest in Fascist Italy's wartime occupations is their undeniable military, political, social and economic failure. Mussolini believed that Fascism's new religion would fashion Italians into a race of conquerors. The considerable geographical extension of Italian wartime occupations meant that maintenance of law and order became a central feature of these occupations. Civilians supporting the partisans were inferior human beings. Bolshevik bandits, they represented a dangerous threat to Fascist civilization.

  • 9 - Campaigns in China, 1937–1945

  • from Part II - Campaigns
  • Edited by John Ferris, University of Calgary, Evan Mawdsley, University of Glasgow
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the Second World War
    Published online:
    05 June 2015
    Print publication:
    23 April 2015, pp 256-286

  • Summary

    In 1937, China and Japan began to fight each other, firmly convinced of the superiority of modern conventional warfare. Japan would win every battle, first at Shanghai, then at Xuzhou, and finally at Wuhan, deploying ever more troops. But it was unable to compel a Chinese surrender. This chapter on military campaigning in China during the Second World War uses the China theatre to examine this development. Japan's attempt to use force to create the conditions for a new political reality in China was an early illustration of a key problem faced by militaries in the age of nationalism and total warfare. For the Ichi-Go offensive, lasting from April 1944 to February 1945, the Japanese deployed 500,000 troops, 100,000 horses, 15,000 vehicles and 1,500 artillery pieces. Fighting took place along a 900-mile stretch of land from the Yellow River in Henan Province all the way to China's border with Indochina.

  • 7 - Nazi genocides

  • from Part I - Ideologies
  • Edited by Richard Bosworth, Jesus College, Oxford, Joseph Maiolo, King's College London
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the Second World War
    Published online:
    05 June 2015
    Print publication:
    23 April 2015, pp 162-180

  • Summary

    This chapter examines how perpetrators of breaches of international law were punished during and after the war. The first trials in Soviet territory began in 1943, as did the evidence-gathering work of the United Nations Commission for the Investigation of War Crimes and also the Moscow Declaration. The aim of deterrence was evident from the first Allied trials, conducted during the war by the Soviets in Krasnodar (14-17 July 1943), against Soviet collaborators, and in Kharkov (15-18 December 1943), against three Germans and one collaborator. All prosecuting states could exploit the concepts of 'representative' defendants and 'representative' examples of Axis criminality in order to further their own interpretations of what was most important to say about the sources, manifestations and meaning of that criminality. Punishment for wartime criminality was ultimately time-limited; the desire of victors and vanquished to move on increased together with the pressures of new political realities and priorities.

Page 315 of 771